Beyond technicism: towards ‘Being’ and ‘knowing in an intra-active pedagogy

John Roder University of Auckland

Peer-reviewed Paper: Vol 2, Num 5 - Oct 2011

In this paper I consider the theme of technology and its influence on how we come to know possibilities in an increasingly fluid, uncertain world. The argument is made that we are not always aware of how technology, linked with the project of modernity, linear progress, certainty and the scientific method, has contributed to an overly instrumental and technicist view of the complex endeavour of early childhood education in contemporary times. If modernity has produced categorizations and separation through binary divides such as theory/practice, adult/child, individual/group, matter/discourse then the project of postmodernity blurs these divisions and draws attention back to their complexity. Understanding how the overarching mood of technology has contributed to these divides and their part in supporting hegemonic technicist views of practice, leads us to question how might this be turned? More specifically I consider alternative views, involving digital technologies and pedagogical documentation that afford new spaces for ‘border crossing’ (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p. 23), as a means for reflecting and revealing our taken for granted assumptions.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) illustrates how we might come to reveal technology’s enframing temperament. It is argued by Heidegger that in being able to acknowledge its technical utility, and also move beyond this seduction, then an alternative scene can emerge for how we might benefit educationally from what it gathers socioculturally in the making. This leads to a making connections made between the use of digital technologies and pedagogical documentation (as in written and oral documented learning narratives, photos, movies, other artefacts and processes in place to support feedback in planning and assessment for learning, and the wider democratic project of involving multiple voices in the community of each early childhood setting). Moreover it is shown, how through learning narratives, dialogue and critically reflective practice we can mount what Hillevi Lenz Lenz Taguchi (2008) calls an ‘ethics of resistance’, and move beyond the binary divides that attempt to order our knowing and being as educators.

This latter exploration draws heavily on Lenz Taguchi’s notion of an intra-active pedagogy in which learning is seen to take place in an ongoing material-discursive flow of agency. That is within a broad ecological system of interdependencies that do not privilege human potentiality in the liberal tradition of the autonomous individual as has been commonly accepted. Rather it brings into play the agency of materials to intra-act in the in-between spaces of these materials, the environment, humans and those discursive meaning-making conditions that exist within the system as a whole. As an example a learning narrative involving infants making their first steps in a centre begins initially at the level of a shift in development, but by re-engaging with events through an intra-active pedagogy, in which the digital camera features as an agent in the event itself and in its use being seen as a catalyst for re-visiting learning, opens up further discursive meaning making milieu surrounding this moment. It is the digital camera’s material affordances mutually constituted with the discursive conditions of a participatory sociocultural curriculum in the making, that are drawn to attention here.

The final part of the this paper suggests that we put information and communication technologies to use in the service of creating new professional identities, as critically reflective ways of being and knowing, to creatively imagine possibilities and alternative readings of our experience, actively resisting the hidden hegemonies that exist to reduce learning complexity through overly technicised, and highly instrumental practices.

Introduction

We have argued that preschools are often conceptualized in overly instrumental ways, as means to produce predetermined and calculable ends through deploying human technologies. Technical practice, finding the most efficient methods to achieve predetermined ends, is the main focus of attention, what might be termed ‘technology as first practice’.
(Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p. 35)

What connects then technology in the broader sense and its use in ordering pedagogy through technicist practices, with our specific interest in the use of digital technologies in early childhood teachers’ practice? Drawing from the work of the philosopher Heidegger in his seminal text The question concerning technology (1977), we have come to think of the objectifying spirit of technology, that is conceived through a modernist view inscribed in the scientific approach. Heidegger argues that we are enframed by technology as it reveals the world to us in certain ways, those ways being linked to the prevailing ways of thinking and times we live in. A key theme in his ‘question’ is his concern over the primacy of scientific rationality and its quest to structure and order the world. Similarly our quest for insight will be into what is gained and lost through this calculative view.

Heidegger does not wish to ‘demonise’ technology, as in the stance taken by those who stand against all progress but seeks to shift our thinking towards the everyday and scrutinize what we take for granted. To help make this clearer let us examine his cryptic claim: “… the essence of technology is nothing technological” (O’Brien, 2004, p. 2). Heidegger, in making this declaration, draws a distinction between technology and the essence of technology. It is to its essence that he attributes the more prescient argument. He provokes a warning that this essence of technology sees humans as resources, making them objects in the technological making, in the same way that technology in the industrial mechanistic age has come to see the earth and all inanimate things in the material world as resources to be exploited. It is important to note that his use of the term is a deliberate challenge to our commonly held assumptions. He does not use the term in the way we might be used to, as what uniquely makes something what it is, rather he sees essence more as we might say essencing, how things come into play. Hence technology is aligned to the prevailing spirit of the times it finds itself in. It comes into play in certain ways that can be disclosed and reimagined (Spinosa, Flores & Dreyfus, 1997). The point then is that although this essence of technology stands in plain light, through the prevailing temperament of philosophy, aligned as it has been to a calculative scientific rationality, it remains hidden to our view.

It is this essencing from a calculative rational stance, rather than technology itself, that sees technologies focus become reductive and technicist. But it is not essential in the absolute sense. Utility can be recognized and appreciated for where it has its place and alternative ways of being for technology allowed to come into play, ones more aligned with a postmodern complexity. Heidegger argues that we can come to appreciate its utility in a very aware manner, and in so doing be released from its blinkering constraints to an ‘other’ mode for what technology might reveal. This alternative mode does not seek to reduce and order the world as resources, human and non-human, rather it seeks to reveal what technology draws to itself which celebrates imagination and what we might think of in more respectful terms as associated with the ‘craft’ of its making, the maker, those making and in the making, and histories of the culture in which it is made.

In an example that will be shared below, of pedagogical documentation catalysed through the digital camera, we can draw a connection to curriculum as a technological system. This works to reveal it’s possibilities through teaching and learning as more akin to art than reductive science. There is not only utility in how the lived curriculum is made in other words but this sense of what is technological, as in what is being designed and made, enables both creatively imagined practice, and what is crafted to be respectfully portrayed. Ultimately this is not seen as an either–or binary, where a technical essence in our work has no place, but a view which allows us to recognize the dangers of technicism, and in so doing, be able to accord them their appropriate and conditional place, and thus be able to move beyond to more complexified views of curriculum practice linked to technology.

Technologies, Technicism and Curriculum Narratives

Early childhood education has shifted from a largely modernist focus, in which the scientific rationalist view has produced normalization and ‘developmentally appropriate practice’ (DAP) has taken primacy. This more expansive sociocultural view reflects a postmodern shift away from normalization, standards and universal developmental stages (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005). In New Zealand this postmodern shift is reflected in Te Whariki, the early childhood curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1996), in the way it has put less emphasis on the traditional developmental view of learning and moved to address learning as contextual, locally situated, embedded in participatory relationships stretched across people, things and environments (Farquhar, 2010). It is a bicultural curriculum that espouses diversity and multiple ways in which to learn. When understood critically, it embraces emergence and complexity rather than a prescribed canon, as in an over emphasis on a one dimensional view of children and learning through what Farquhar outlines as traces hanging on to a more reductionist developmental concept of stages/ages aligned with neoliberal economic intentions (p. 144). In de-emphasising all constraining technicist narratives a revitalized alternative Other narrative of difference in learning, in pedagogy, and in children’s and teacher’s identities can be advanced as Farquhar has outlined (2010, p. 143). In this scenario technologies that are in play within education, and more particularly contexts that are related to early childhood education place the focus on the agency of digital technologies, and within this narrative reflect on how a might shift might occur of a view of technology so that its essence affords creative and imaginative practice rather than a reductive technicist gaze.

Defining Technological use in Early Childhood Education

If we were to ask early childhood teachers what technologies are present in the wider milieu of their professional lives the answer would include digital cameras and computers, the Internet and possibly more low tech forms such as TVs and CD players. It is unlikely that tools for recording and creating language, and for expressing ideas, pencils, crayons paper and other artefacts which have much longer histories will come to mind. This perhaps represents the contemporary zeitgeist and popular discourse contributing to the claim we live in a digital age. It is also unlikely that the buildings, the interior designed environments and exterior playgrounds will be mentioned. Similarly it would not be expected that the less visible technological systems that govern and order much of the day’s activities are proffered, although these may be quite invisible, they can significantly impact on our professional roles and identities, and as will be critiqued, also influence the orientation of pedagogy and curriculum that is supported in centres.

Definitions of technology usually encompass the dimension of design and making of solutions to meet perceived needs and opportunities. These solutions could take the form of artefacts, environments or technological processes and systems. For some elaboration see the Technology Learning Area found in The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 32). The last form, technological systems can be seen as manifest in the design of governments, transport networks, the Internet, and of particular interest, the designed environments and systems of education as in the institution of school and early childhood education centre.

Technology might also be defined as it is in the New Oxford American dictionary as “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes(NOAD 2nd Edition, 2005–2009). This theme can be found in numerous descriptions of technology on the web and is useful within this discussion as it adds to an understanding of the nexus between technology and knowledge. This is partly because it signals the link between science and progress, as in the application of scientific knowledge to our ongoing lived practices. Dahlberg and Moss (2005) would add this link begs an important question about whether all applications of scientific knowledge and uses of various technologies are good in the ethical sense, and how would we know?

For our purposes, questioning this modernist notion of progress and its associations with “… social and technological determinism” (Bigum & Rowan, 2008, p. 250) also has some significance for how we see the many forms of technology that are manifested in our concepts of education. It is significant in regard to the relationship between education and to the creation of more ethical democratic practice. Education cannot help but be enframed by the abiding technological mood in which we can become more critically aware and by acknowledging when smoothness and efficiency is genuinely needed. However we need to learn to recognize that this also conceals; when our taken for granted experience of technology leads to an uncritical belief in progress and efficiency, as in for example a reductionist curriculum of heavily prescribed practices where we become more aware of when technology as a ‘gaze’, (Robertson, 2006, p. 148) closes down the imagination of alternative possibilities. If our gaze is transformed through reflection and a richer engagement with technology, we are able to look beyond its instrumental utility to ways it might acknowledge diversity and complexity as our ‘normal’ experience of the world. In an extended argument addressing this diversity and complexity Lenz Taguchi, makes the following points: “Education is characterized by a paradox of two competing movements: one of complexity and diversity increase and one of complexity and diversity reduction.” (2011, p. 14). She argues for transgressing traditional binary divides arising from modernist separation and ordering, which are given most primacy through developmental and revised DAP perspectives, going on to comment that despite appearing to be against our better judgement:

… the more we seem to know about the complexity of learning, children's diverse strategies and multiple theories of knowledge, the more we seek to impose learning strategies and curriculum goals that reduce the complexities and diversities of this learning and knowing (2011, p. 14).

“Technologies of developmentality,” is a term Fendler (2001, p. 120. cited in Lenz Taguchi , 2008, p. 271) coins to align scientific rationality from the developmental sphere with similar values arising in a “… neoliberal notion of choice and progressive efficiency.”(p. 271).Within this alignment, technologies present as regulatory systems, the technologies of management that do not just structure the physical environment and make use of natural resources but treat people as a resource to be ordered. This contributes to our ongoing identity for example as expert teachers and may limit our opportunities as reflective learners, co-constructing meaning of our experiences with others in our communities within the affordances of specific created environments. Dahlberg et al., (2007) outline an extensive argument for critiquing this rhetoric of ‘quality’ where they see an increasing, almost ubiquitous presence of instrumental technicist systems and practices associated with ‘quality’ in early childhood:

A further clutch of technologies monitor and assess children and workers in preschools. Some measure whether the correct conditions are in place in preschools to secure the predetermined outcomes required of them, what might be termed the technology of quality. ‘Quality’ has become the great cliché of our age (2007, p. 9).

Entangling the material and social world in an interactive pedagogy

In educational settings we become aware of how people, adults and children are treated as human resources who bend to fit standardized practices such as the ratio of staff to children for supervision and ‘care’, systems for the timetabling of staff and what is ordered in the daily routines of the centre. This is not to downplay the importance of routines that play an essential part in the life of a centre, ensuring an element of necessary security at times, rather it is to become aware of how our constructed systems and environments afford different possibilities and what these are contingent on. In this sense responding to this challenge that is more critically informed allows for transgressing binary divides; for example, developing more reciprocal relationships rather than the separation of expert/learner, adult/child, individual/group and the spaces between theory and practice, the material environment and cultural discourse. Along with Lenz Taguchi(2010) it can be argued that this awareness of contingent conditions amongst all elements of the system, human and non- human, that members of an educational community are more able to deal with complexity and adjust to the fluid, uncertain and emergent possibilities for curriculum to be lived differently.

It could be read that the curriculum technologies of pedagogical documentation and the digital technologies of movie making that are elaborated on, miss the deeper questions of ontology and epistemology that are core to our ability to make decisions about curriculum and pedagogy. Ontology refers to our theories about what is seen to be real, what the being of things are. Epistemology refers to our theories of knowledge and knowing. Lenz Taguchi (2010) explains these differences and goes on to suggest that they cannot be seen as separated in the way philosophers have traditionally done so in the past. It opens up the space in which we return to well recognised questions about whether there is a reality external to our own social construction of meaning and being, truth seen as “… the revelation of a knowable world” (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 2007, p. 19).This kind of claim is contestable:

From a postmodern perspective, there is no absolute reality waiting out there to be discovered . . .Instead, the world and our knowledge of it are seen as socially constructed and all of us, as human beings, are active participants in this process… , engaged in relationships with others in meaning making rather than truth finding (Dahlberg et al., 2007, p. 23).

Drawing on the feminist philosopher of science Karan Barad (2007), Taguchi calls this blurring of ‘being’ and ‘knowing’, ontology and epistemology an ‘onto- epistemology’ signalling how they mutually co-constitute each other. As an example she links being with knowing to the notion that: “The child becomes, in a specific sense, what it learns, in a steadily ongoing flow of material-discursive events.” (Taguchi, 2010, p. 39). As an example she links being with knowing to the notion that: “The child becomes, in a specific sense, what it learns, in a steadily ongoing flow of material-discursive events” (p. 39). Adopting Barad’s notion of ‘agential realism’ (p.37) to develop these ideas of non-human agency into an embodied view of learning Lenz Taguchi terms an intra-active pedagogy (p.30) where the long held binaries of mind/body, subject/object, discourse/matter are dissolved. She explains intra-active pedagogy in complexified systemic terms, where learning is seen to take place in an ongoing material-discursive flow of agency within a broad ecological system of interdependencies that do not privilege human potentiality. By doing this she is not only critiquing the limits of constructivism as in the liberal tradition of the autonomous individual learner, she also critiques social constructivist thinking where it limits material matter to a largely passive role. This is somewhat surprising until one accepts, as Lenz Taguchi claims, that discourses have primarily been seen as inscribed on materials and environments rather than necessarily taking an active role in their production. Rinaldi (2007) reflecting the thinking of Loris Malaguzzi and the Reggio Emilia view of the environment as the ‘third educator’ would say they have argued for this mutual entailment and space for environmental provocation for many decades. Reggio Emilia, a municipality in Northern Italy, is widely known for its contribution of pedagogical documentation, where visual technologies have been used as tools to make visible children’s (and adult’s) learning, (Giudici, Rinaldi & Krechevsky, 2001; Rinaldi, 2006). Photography has been a mainstay of the archival process in which children and adults develop their ideas.

Lenz Taguchi (2010) acknowledges Reggio’s role in influencing this agential potentiality believing however there is more to understand here, as we put material agency on the same plane of immanence as the potential of human agency. It is beyond the scope of this paper to take this further but her argument brings into play the agency of materials to intra-act in the in-between spaces of these materials, the environment, humans, other organisms and those culturally discursive meaning-making conditions and histories that exist within the system. In more recent times, other educators have worked in similar ways to Lenz Taguchi and to the Reggio inspired pedagogies, by picking up upon the materialised agency of matter whether environments, natural artefacts in the environment, or digital tools, particularly cameras, to afford an expansive range of opportunities for experimentation in emergent curriculum (e.g. Olssen, 2009).

Making learning visible with digital technologies

Digital technologies such as cameras and mobile technologies which inexpensively capture still photographs and movies, along with computers, screen technologies and more recently the Internet, are now commonplace in New Zealand early childhood institutions (Mitchell, 2008). Similarly given today’s Web 2.0 multimedia world (Facebook etc), they are also taken-for-granted artefacts in the wider lifespaces of teachers and children. These tools usually play a prominent part in the main form of pedagogical documentation which in New Zealand began pre-digitally with Margaret Carr’s work on learning narratives or learning stories (2001). The expense of photos initially meant photography as part of a learning story was somewhat more restricted in its scale compared with the shift in costs that digitalization has brought to these processes.

The challenge to technicist approaches to assessment in New Zealand research in early childhood settings has clearly been about moving away from that which is enacted primarily in the form of observations of individual development, towards more descriptive narrative forms of assessment that open up learning from plural perspectives. It has particularly attempted to address assessment as formative, in which it sets out to reveal and inform learning from a sociocultural stance, where learning is seen as emergent in the interactions distributed over people places and things (Carr, 2001; Cowie & Carr, 1999). A feature of the research informing these shifts in pedagogical assessment has been to reflect more about what is noticed, what is recognized and what is responded to, including studies looking at technological affordance and social practice with the aid of learning stories (Carr, 2000).

This paper has highlighted the risks of an uncritical use of technology. There have been other research projects investigating assessment and use of learning stories in process. Davies (2006) suggests that assessment documentation might provoke reflection at staff meetings and act as a catalyst for discussion of learning when talking with parents. Critical reflection overall is not widely understood in the context of the activity around assessment. Davies’ research finds evidence of technicist conceptions, particularly ones associated with outside accountability, as in external regulatory systems and in respect to fulfilling roles meeting the needs of various audiences that teachers felt accountable to.

As has been discussed earlier the need is to be more critical of what forms of technological-pedagogical practices can be revealed other than what is already assumed. Cowie and Carr (1999) have been influential in revealing alternatives to uncritical positions, opening up for scrutiny what is noticed, recognized and responded to by developing the notion that these forms of narrative assessment: “… act as conscription devices for participants, establishing the membership of a social community of learners and teachers; children, families and the staff team” (p. 95). They have shown why divides such as individual/group, teacher/learner, expert/parent theory/discourse need challenging, and similar to Lenz Taguchi what has needed resisting through critical reflection where meaning is negotiated in various acts of border-crossing. (Lenz Taguchi , 2008; Lenz Taguchi 2010).

Shifts in other parts of the world have signalled a move away from technicist approaches to assessment, recognized by instrumental practices dominated with legitimatised scientific knowledge, to a more postmodern pluralistic democratic forms. Following inspiration from Reggio Emilia, Sweden has become a leader in beginning to explore: “… pedagogical documentation as a tool for reflecting on pedagogical practice and as a means for the construction of an ethical relationship to ourselves, to the Other and the world—what we have termed an ethics of an encounter.” (Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 2007, p 142)

Gunilla Dahlberg and Peter Moss have also drawn attention through both their own writing (2005), their writing with Alan Pence (2007), and other contributors to their edited book series ‘Contesting Early Childhood’ (2005–2011), ways in which through critical reflection in pedagogical documentation, there is potential for the identity of the pedagogue or educator to be constructed as a researcher, and discloser of new possibilities. They have highlighted for over a decade, critical questions about the dominant ideas that have been driving many of our everyday, taken for granted, instrumental and technicist practices in early childhood settings. It cannot be emphasized enough that it is not the assemblage itself of the various elements of documentation, whether written narratives, photos, movies or other produced artefacts by themselves that make any difference. It is not documentation as accountability as Alcock (1998) notes, rather it is documentation for learning and that you cannot have pedagogical documentation without critical reflection. In Lenz Taguchi ’s view it is having a deconstructive dialogical space, which through heightened criticality is democratically and deliberately strived for, that we are able to mount an ‘ethics of resistance’ (2008, p. 270),“… to recognize and challenge the taken for granted ideas, biases, hidden agendas, and theoretical discourses that informed their daily teaching practices” (p. 270). An example of a learning story that reveals some of what has been discussed here is now shared.

Mia at the movies – a learning story from her teacher Slavica Jovanovic

In my mind I was initially planning to record this ‘moment’ in a photo. So I started taking photos when I noticed her holding on to the table, and to the dishwasher nearby in the kitchen. And then Mia noticed me across the floor taking photos. She smiled as she always does. I thought this might be the moment she was going to walk across the expanse of the vinyl floor between us. I even encouraged her “Come Mia let go and come. And that is what she did. As she looked set to walk across the open space she slipped back to the floor, crawling madly across towards me, to the same side but not exactly to where I was. There are times when she would crawl to me and stand up using my legs as support, but not on this occasion. Mia had her own plan.

She made her beeline to a side table on the carpet nearby. It is not a particularly sturdy table, more a type of butler’s tray but it was next to a wall and it was the wall she used to provide her initial thrust upwards and back to a standing balancing pose. She shifted tentatively to the table whilst gazing towards me. She decided she could let go of the table and made a little step, which enabled her to straighten up. At this point she wobbled for a moment, almost fell but swiftly restored her balance. What followed was very well practiced balancing ritual: both hands up, then ‘yay’ from Mia and from me. When Mia started standing up she would often lift her hands in the air, exclaiming ‘Yay!’ As a sign of our support for Mia’s ability to stand up without support and balance well, we would also go ‘yay’ back to her with our hands lifted above our heads too. She has been exploring balancing in this fashion for quite some time. She ‘knows’ how it looks like when she is in balance. Mia made this tiny move forward with her foot encountering something different from what she expected: she was standing on the borderline between the carpet and the vinyl. The floor surface was not even! Surprised she looked down quickly once, having half of her foot on the vinyl part and another half on the carpet. This is an important point for what follows. Mia started exploring this phenomenon with her foot only, gazing in the distance and thinking about her ‘discovery’ deeply. She decided to use her whole body to explore this further. Supported by her hands she started swaying sideways left and right (her foot still in the same position with her little toes visibly moving and exploring the surface, now also supported by her touch/hands evaluation). Clearly, Mia needed to convince herself if it is safe to walk here. She has been taking the assessment of the floor ‘evenness’ quite seriously! She decided to postpone walking in the centre for today. With the huge smile on her face she crawled fast to where I was sitting and started close up playing with the camera.

Using a camera and the decision to make a movie has been invaluable in many ways. Even if my initial intention of recording Mia’s first step in the centre hasn’t been realized, I find this little clip to be quite significant. What has been captured here? Is it possible that Mia’s unfolding and evolving thinking and how she makes sense of the world has been captured? I believe so. From the intention to capture what the body can do (walking) it turned out I captured what thought can do. Slavica Jovanovic (October 2011)

Following the making of this movie our teacher shared it and her insights from the event with Mia’s mother Pahnia, when she arrived at the end of the day. In addition to what is already self- evident in the learning story we can think of how the movie itself can been understood as materialised intra-activity between the thought, culture and the material artefacts such as what was held onto and what supported Mia’s standing poses. Within the narrative we can also see a teacher’s theories as reflective discourses of what might be happening, how Mia’s developing thinking through her body (foot) were clearly visible in the movie, and this image of a competent and capable child could be shared with her mother and other educators. It seemed for the teacher as though all activities involving this movie making have been able to inspire visibility in reflective meaning making processes. Mia’s mother contributed her own voice, and how if she had not had the chance to share in this dialogue whilst viewing the movie she would have thought ‘Bubba is just standing there”. If this had been looked at only through a developmental lens then the focus would have remained on readiness to walk. It is clear that material agencies of the floor, the wall, the strip and the camera, have all played a significant role in the learning. Similarly, the ritual social discourses, and teachers pedagogical beliefs evident in these meaning making intra-actions have been influential. The key insights we take from Lenz Taguchi is this intra-activity in the in between spaces of all material-discursive flow of agency enable all elements both human and non- human, to learn as a complex interdependent system.

Conclusion

For many early childhood educators the shift into the digital age has meant a steep learning curve with computers and other digital technologies. There have been a range of pressures discussed that have led to increased use of pedagogical documentation in centres. It has been argued that broader technological use has often been in support of reductive and technicist purposes. In the context of early childhood education this can be translated into a prescient warning that assessment and learning documentation and the production of its artefacts and discursive practices can follow similar technicist ends, most commonly the risk of supporting a one-dimensional view of curriculum that has traditionally favoured one developmental observation in the support of developmentally appropriate practices. In contrast to this it has been argued that efforts in documenting learning to make it visible do not constitute a rich form of pedagogical documentation capable of meeting more diverse needs and a more complex and democratic view of education unless they embrace critical reflection. An intra-active pedagogy that shifts the balance away from privileged human agency to a new balancing of material-discursive interdependencies has been shared. This transgressing pedagogy promoted by Hillevi Lenz Taguchi that reaches beyond the theory/practice divide has been explored as an example of pedagogical practice and philosophy that will enable a more critical exposure of our everyday assumptions, and enable us to engage in new border-crossing journeys as educators.

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